Packages for cereal, coffee, sugar and other such small particulate solid substances offer no control over how much material is delivered. As such, children and other individuals may dispense the wrong amount, removing predictability from nutritional or dietary needs, or may spill and waste some of the purchased material. Although scoops are sometimes provided with packages, they can be lost, overfilled or underfilled.
One dispensing package exists, but it is limited to the delivery of laundry detergent. U.S. Pat. No. 3,850,347 describes a dispenser package provided with a customer manually operated mechanical device adapted to scoop up a predetermined and controlled amount of fluent or granular material such as measured quantities of soap powder and deliver the measured quantity of material through a dispenser port opening into a selected container or area.
FIGS. 1-3 illustrate this prior-art apparatus. The preferred embodiment should be incorporated into and would include an overall conventional consumer package 11 which would be of a generally rectangular shape. The dispenser package 11 would have conventional front panel 12, back panel 13, left side panel 14, right side panel 15, bottom panel 16 and top panel 17 enclosing and defining an internal storage compartment 18 for receiving and holding powdered or granular flowable materials such as detergents or soap laundering powder.
At the consumer end the package is opened by tearing away or opening whatever closure material the manufacturer has used to close dispenser port opening 19. The customer will then hold and rotate dispenser package 11 into a downward tilt position such that fluent material from exit port opening 19 will be directed into an open washing machine or other useful container. The customer then employs his thumb and forefinger to rotate tab 28 in such manner as to cause material measuring and carrying scoop paddlewheel 22 to move in a clockwise direction.
The downward tilt position will cause granular or fluent material stored in the internal storage compartment 18 of package 11 to gravity feed flow through sized input port opening 35 in portion measuring housing partition 32 into measuring chamber 31 until it occupies all of the space between two of the adjacent radially spaced apart scoop panels or vanes 23-23 of measuring wheel 22 which quantity of material is programmed to be the amount required for laundering one washing machine load of clothing.
When measuring and carrying scoop paddlewheel 22 had been rotated sufficiently for the loaded compartment to open into and through exit port 19 one measured portion of laundry detergent or other fluent material will have been dispensed. Each subsequent 90 degree rotation will deliver one additional portion of measured fluent material.